Successfully challenging council tax band

[Clickbait]

Wondering if anyone has had any experience with challenging the council tax band their property is in? We discovered our band is one higher than our immediate neighbours when their house went on the market and I had a nosy at the details which initially listed (in error) the band being 3 bands lower.

Their house has an additional bedroom and en-suite to ours. That took me down a rabbit hole of looking at other bandings and there are many houses that look to be the same size or bigger at one or two bands lower. The issue is finding out more details of these houses like square footage or number of bedrooms when many haven’t been on the market recently.

I’m unsure exactly how much evidence you’d need to provide to be successful. I’m motivated enough to knock on doors to ask people about their property but I’m not sure what reaction I’d get! This is purely to get our tax lowered in line with what is considered reasonable for these other properties, not to try and get theirs increased.

Any knowledge and advice would be gratefully received!

 

[Murphygirl]

We did this last year moving into a new property. It was a brand new development and a bigger house along the road was band d and we were an e. We used the comparison in square footage and value of property compared to the band d property as the main reason and it was an accepted and we were rebranded to d. We are on a private road but you can’t use things such as no streetlights or taking bins to road ie council services, it’s all based on the property itself. It only took a few weeks for them to review our application, approve our request and reband it. We were advised to keep paying the higher band until application was approved then bill was recalculated for the rest of the year.
Also to add, my local authority had all our neighbours banding publicly listed on their website so easy to check everyone else’s to see how you compare.
Unfortunately you do run the risk of neighbours banding changing too as our neighbours was changed to an e!

 

[Jane Tee]

Yes i challenged mine. I went via the link on martin lewis website. I came down a band.

 

[I'm that Diva]

I used to work for the Valuation Office, I left about 20 years ago but as far as I'm aware nothing drastic has changed in that time. Back in the 90's due to housing market explosion you could extend your property add on additional rooms etc., and your council tax would remain the same until sold, as new buyers would in effect be buying a larger property, so some houses could have lower bands but larger footprint if they haven't sold their property. Sometimes the listing was wrongly applied in the first place.

You can appeal against your banding by application to the Valuation Office to get it checked (it's free). If you are an owner/occupier who been in the property for no more than 6 months, there has been a material change (a bus shelter placed outside your house for example) or a change of domestic to business or vice versa, these criteria will be classed as a Valid appeal. If you don't come under any of those then you will get a letter saying that your appeal is Invalid. You are then invited to appeal against the Invalid appeal (civil service in action here) It will still come back as Invalid, all it means is that the computer system knows that you don't come under any of the previous criteria for a Valid appeal. From what I recall an Invalid appeal gets looked into more as the listing officer has to supply the evidence to prove that the banding is right/wrong. So a letter will say the appeal against an Invalid appeal is still invalid, but it does get investigated.

In majority of cases where properties are found to be in the wrong band they get lowered but occasionally they can be in a too low band and get raised but that is a rarity.

 

[littlepup]

Wondering if anyone has had any experience with challenging the council tax band their property is in? We discovered our band is one higher than our immediate neighbours when their house went on the market and I had a nosy at the details which initially listed (in error) the band being 3 bands lower.

Their house has an additional bedroom and en-suite to ours. That took me down a rabbit hole of looking at other bandings and there are many houses that look to be the same size or bigger at one or two bands lower. The issue is finding out more details of these houses like square footage or number of bedrooms when many haven’t been on the market recently.

I’m unsure exactly how much evidence you’d need to provide to be successful. I’m motivated enough to knock on doors to ask people about their property but I’m not sure what reaction I’d get! This is purely to get our tax lowered in line with what is considered reasonable for these other properties, not to try and get theirs increased.

Any knowledge and advice would be gratefully received!

My council has info on their website and you need examples of 5 comparable properties at a lower rate.

 

[Clickbait]

I used to work for the Valuation Office, I left about 20 years ago but as far as I'm aware nothing drastic has changed in that time. Back in the 90's due to housing market explosion you could extend your property add on additional rooms etc., and your council tax would remain the same until sold, as new buyers would in effect be buying a larger property, so some houses could have lower bands but larger footprint if they haven't sold their property. Sometimes the listing was wrongly applied in the first place.

You can appeal against your banding by application to the Valuation Office to get it checked (it's free). If you are an owner/occupier who been in the property for no more than 6 months, there has been a material change (a bus shelter placed outside your house for example) or a change of domestic to business or vice versa, these criteria will be classed as a Valid appeal. If you don't come under any of those then you will get a letter saying that your appeal is Invalid. You are then invited to appeal against the Invalid appeal (civil service in action here) It will still come back as Invalid, all it means is that the computer system knows that you don't come under any of the previous criteria for a Valid appeal. From what I recall an Invalid appeal gets looked into more as the listing officer has to supply the evidence to prove that the banding is right/wrong. So a letter will say the appeal against an Invalid appeal is still invalid, but it does get investigated.

In majority of cases where properties are found to be in the wrong band they get lowered but occasionally they can be in a too low band and get raised but that is a rarity.

Thank you this is helpful. We have been in the property for more than 6 months and there have been no material changes so are you saying we can’t appeal successfully? There are honestly so many houses of a similar size or bigger that are older and one or two bands lower. Some may have been extended and a lot haven’t been on the market for a long time but others clearly haven’t. There is also one house built a year after ours that is way bigger than ours (at least half the size again) with a much bigger plot that is the same band as us which is baffling.

Yes i challenged mine. I went via the link on martin lewis website. I came down a band.

How long had you been in your property when you challenged?

 

[I'm that Diva]

Yes you can still appeal, it will just come back Invalid as you don't come under any of the criteria for a valid appeal, but it will still be investigated and if found to be too high will be lowered.

 

[Jane Tee]

Thank you this is helpful. We have been in the property for more than 6 months and there have been no material changes so are you saying we can’t appeal successfully? There are honestly so many houses of a similar size or bigger that are older and one or two bands lower. Some may have been extended and a lot haven’t been on the market for a long time but others clearly haven’t. There is also one house built a year after ours that is way bigger than ours (at least half the size again) with a much bigger plot that is the same band as us which is baffling.


How long had you been in your property when you challenged?

I think 8 years.

 

[Clickbait]

Fab thanks all. I’m going to try and find 5 comparable properties that have not been extended and submit a case.